Nuclear Reaction. Don Pendleton

BLAST OF AUTOMATIC fire surprised Adi Lusila, nearly made him swerve the car into a roadside ditch. One moment, he was concentrating on the highway and Pahlavi in the car ahead of him, trying his best to leave the soldiers in his wake, and then Sanjiv Dushkriti blew the damned back window out, turning the car’s interior into a roaring wind tunnel.

      Lusila shouted at Dushkriti. “What possessed you?”

      “A great desire to stay alive,” Dushkriti answered, then craned back across his seat to fire another short burst from his L-2 A-3 Sterling submachine gun. One hot cartridge stung Lusila’s ear, then fell into his lap.

      “Take care with that!”

      “It’s no good from here,” Dushkriti said, by way of an apology, and turned to scramble awkwardly between their seats, climbing into the back. One of his boots glanced off the gearshift as he made the move. Lusila cursed at the grating sound it made.

      The grating sound was followed by a loud clang.

      “We’re hit,” Dushkriti said, and sounded almost pleased about it. “Do not worry, Adi.”

      Idiot, Lusila thought. They were pursued by soldiers, with a foreign stranger driving Darius ahead of them, and now Dushkriti had provoked a running battle that would likely get them killed.

      “Don’t worry?” Lusila said with a sneer.

      A sudden laugh surprised him, coming out of nowhere and erupting from his throat. He was hysterical. It was the only diagnosis that made any sense at all. If he pulled over now, right where he was, perhaps there was a chance that he could plead insanity. Laugh all the way to jail and through his trial, praying to land in an asylum, rather than a basement torture cell or execution chamber.

      Not a chance, Lusila thought.

      The soldiers were already shooting at him, thanks to Dushkriti. Even if he stopped and raised his hands, with an armed madman in the car they wouldn’t grant him any time for pleas or explanations.

      He would simply have to run, and when escape was clearly an impossibility, beyond the palest shadow of a doubt, then he would have to fight.

      And die, of course.

      What other outcome could there be when four men stood against some thirty-five or forty?

      And it might not even be four men, Lusila realized. Pahlavi and the tall American might keep on going if he stopped to fight. They could use the distraction to escape and save themselves.

      To carry on the mission.

      Adi Lusila flinched from that idea, as if it were a stinging slap across his face. Pahlavi wouldn’t ask for such a sacrifice. He would give up his own life first, to save his friends. But losing him was not in the best interest of their cause.

      A bitter taste had wormed its way onto Lusila’s tongue, matching the stench of cordite in his nostrils. In between the bursts from Dushkriti’s Sterling, he could hear return fire from the jeep behind them, now and then a bullet slamming home into his vehicle.

      “Hang on!” he warned, and began to swerve across the two-lane highway, back and forth, hoping his serpentine progress would make it harder for the soldiers in the jeep to kill him, likewise spoiling any shot they might’ve had at Pahlavi and the American up front.

      “My stomach!” Dushkriti cried.

      “Are you hit?”

      “Car sick!”

      “So, puke and keep on firing!”

      When a new stink filled the car, Lusila gave thanks that the rear window was gone. Let the foul odors from his friend blow back along the highway toward their enemies and sicken them, instead.

      Dushkriti finished gagging, rattled off another burst of automatic fire, then growled, “I need another magazine.”

      He hunched down in the back seat, fumbling in his jacket pocket, thereby giving Lusila his first clear view of their pursuers since the chase began in earnest. Even as he glimpsed the lead jeep in his rearview mirror, the officer in its front passenger seat shouldered his rifle, aimed and fired as Lusila swerved the car again.

      He nearly outsmarted himself, turning into the shot, rather than away from it. The bullet whistled past Dushkriti’s head and clipped a corner of the rearview mirror, then punched through the windshield with a solid crack. Lusila cursed and started swerving more erratically, letting his fear dictate his moves as much as logic.

      “Stop!” Dushkriti shouted. “I can’t load the gun!”

      “Try harder, then!” Lusila snapped. “They almost took my head off!”

      With a sharp metallic clacking sound, Dushkriti mated his magazine with the Sterling’s receiver, then cocked it once more and pushed up on his elbows, preparing to fire.

      It was a fluke, Lusila thought, the soldier in the jeep behind them choosing just that moment to unleash another shot. What were the odds of it? Much less that he would somehow manage to anticipate Lusila’s movement of the steering wheel.

      It was a miracle of sorts that the next bullet drilled Dushkriti’s forehead and exploded through his shaggy hair in back, spraying a gray-and-crimson mist across Lusila and the dashboard gauges.

      It was his turn, then, to fight the rising tide of nausea and pray that he could keep his old car on the road while bullets hammered at it from behind.

      “WHAT’S HAPPENING?” Pahlavi asked, half turning in his seat.

      Bolan glanced at the rearview mirror, then came back to focus on the long, straight two-lane road. “They’re under fire,” he answered. “Taking hits.”

      “But fighting back, yes?”

      “From the sound of it. You want to tell me where we’re going?”

      “Five more miles,” Pahlavi said. “There is a road into the hills. It leads to my safe place.”

      “It won’t be safe for long if we lead soldiers to the doorstep,” Bolan told him. “What’s Plan B?”

      “Plan B?”

      “Your backup. Something else on tap, when things go wrong.”

      Pahlavi’s stricken face told Bolan there was no Plan B. “I did not think there would be soldiers here,” the Pakistani said. “They almost never pass this way in daylight.”

      “‘Almost’ obviously doesn’t cut it,” Bolan said.

      “I’m sorry. Let me think.”

      “Think fast!”

      More firing erupted from behind them, and the second car was definitely taking hits from one rifle, maybe a couple of them. In his mirror, Bolan saw a bullet chip the windshield from inside, before the driver started swerving like a drunkard. He guessed it was the best the other man could think of, while his partner laid down cover fire but couldn’t seem to score a solid hit.

      “There are some woods ahead,” Pahlavi blurted out. “Perhaps three miles. If we can lead them there, perhaps—”

      “It’s worth a shot,” Bolan said, even as he thought about the killer odds. He’d counted twenty-four men in the open truck, plus two inside the cab, two in the lead jeep, four more in the second, which meant they were outnumbered eight to one.

      Those weren’t the worst odds he had ever faced, granted, but Bolan didn’t know how skilled his companions were at combat. If the one’s wild shooting with the submachine gun was any indication, they might be more liability than help in a firefight.

      A tiny splash of color in his rearview mirror drew the warrior’s eye, in time to see the second car in their high-speed procession swerving more erratically than ever. Bolan couldn’t tell who’d been hit, the shooter or the driver, but he worked it out a second later, when the car stayed on the road and didn’t stall.

      One